Prentice Alvin ttoam-3

by Orson Scott Card

  “Well, then, as you wish,” said Cavil. “I know God will bless your journey.”

  Chapter 18 – Manacles

  It was early spring, a couple of months before Alvin's nineteenth birthday, when Makepeace Smith come to him and said, “About time you start working on a journeyman piece, Ali don't you think?”

  The words sang like redbird song in Alvin's ears, so he couldn't hardly speak back except to nod.

  “Well, what do you think you'll make?” asked the master.

  “I been thinking maybe a plow,” said Alvin.

  “That's a lot of iron. Takes a perfect mold, and no easy one, neither. You're asking me to put a good bit of iron at risk, boy.”

  “If I fail, you can always melt it back.”

  Since they both knew that Alvin had about as much chance of failing as he did of flying, this was pretty much empty talk– just the last rags of Makepeace's old pretense about how Alvin wasn't much good at smithing.

  “Reckon so,” said Makepeace. “You just do your best, boy. Hard but not too brittle. Heavy enough to bite deep, but light enough to pull. Sharp enough to cut the earth, and strong enough to cast all stones aside.”

  “Yes sir.” Alvin had memorized the rules of the tools back when he was twelve years old.

  There were some other rules that Alvin meant to follow. He had to prove to himself that he was a good smith, and not just a half-baked Maker, which meant that he'd use none of his knack, only the skills that any smith has– a good eye, knowledge of the black metal, the vigor of his arms and the skill of his hands.

  Working on his journeyman piece meant he had no other duties till it was done. He started from scratch on this one, as a good journeyman always does. No common clay for the mold– he went upriver on the Hatrack to the best white clay, so the face of the mold would be pure and smooth and hold its shape. Making a mold meant seeing things all inside-out, but Alvin had a good mind for shapes. He patted and stroked the clay into place on the wooden frame, all the time seeing how the different pieces of the mold would give the cooling iron its plow shape. Then he baked the mold dry and hard, ready to receive the iron.

  For the metal, he took from the pile of scrap iron and then carefully filed the iron clean, getting rid of all dirt and rust. He scoured the crucible, too. Only then was he ready to melt and cast. He hotted up the coal fire, twining the bellows himself, raising and lowering the bellows handle just like he done when he was a new prentice. At last the iron was white in the crucible– and the fire so hot he could scarce bear to come near it. But he came near it anyway, tongs in hand, and hoisted the crucible from the fire, then carried it to the mold and poured. The iron sparked and dazzled, but the mold held true, no buckling or breaking in the heat.

  Set the crucible back in the fire. Push the other parts of the mold into place. Gently, evenly, getting no splash. He had judged the amount of liquid iron just right– when the last part of the form slipped into place, just a bit of iron squeezed out evenly all around the edges, showing there was just enough, and scarce any waste.

  And it was done. Nothing for it but to wait for the iron to cool and harden. Tomorrow he'd know what he'd wrought.

  Tomorrow Makepeace Smith would see his plow and call him a man– a journeyman, free to practice at any forge, though not yet ready to take on his own prentices. But to Alvin– well, he'd reached that point of readiness years ago. Makepeace would have only a few weeks short of the full seven years of Alvin's service– that's what he'd been waiting for, not for this plow.

  No, Alvin's real journeyman work was yet to come. After Makepeace declared the plow good enough, then Alvin had yet another work to perform.

  “I'm going to turn it gold,” said Alvin.

  Miss Larner raised an eyebrow. “And what then? What will you tell people about a golden plow? That you found it somewhere? That you happened to have some gold lying about, and thought– this is just enough to make a plow?”

  “You're the one what told me a Maker was the one who could turn iron to gold.”

  “Yes, but that doesn't mean it's wise to do it.” Miss Larner walked out of the hot forge into the stagnant air of late afternoon. It was cooler, but not much– the first hot night of spring.

  “More than gold,” said Alvin. “Or at least not normal gold.”

  “Regular gold isn't good enough for you?”

  “Gold is dead. Like iron.”

  “It isn't dead. It's simply earth without fire. It never was alive, so it can't be dead.”

  “You're the one who told me that if I can imagine it, then maybe I can make it come to be.”

  “And you can imagine living gold?”

  “A plow that cuts the earth with no ox to draw it.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes sparkled.

  “If I could make such a thing, Miss Larner, would you consider as how I'd graduated from your school for Makers?”

  “I'd say you were no longer a prentice Maker.”

  “Just what I thought, Miss Larner. A journeyman blacksmith and a journeyman Maker both, if I can do it.”

  “And can you?”

  Alvin nodded, then shrugged. “I think so. It's what you said about atoms, back in January.”

  “I thought you gave up on that.”

  “No ma'am. I just kept thinking– what is it you can't cut into smaller pieces? And then I thought– why, if it's got any size at all, it can be cut. So an atom, it's nothing more than just a place, one exact place, with no width at all.”

  “Euclid's geometric point.”

  “Well, yes ma'am, except that you said his geometry was all imaginary, and this is real.”

  “But if it has no size, Alvin–”

  “That's what I thought– if it's got no size, then it's nothing. But it isn't nothing. It's a place. Only then I thought, it isn't a place– it just has a place. If you see the difference. An atom can be in one place, one pure geometric point like you said, but then it can move. It can be somewhere else. So, you see, it not only has place, it has a past and a future. Yesterday it was there, today it's here, and tomorrow over yonder.”

  “But it isn't anything, Alvin.”

  “No, I know that, it isn't anything. But it ain't nothing, neither.”

  “Isn't. Either.”

  “I know all that grammar, Miss Larner, but I'm not thinking about that right now.”

  “You won't have good grammar unless you use it even when you're not thinking about it. But never mind.”

  “See, I start thinking, if this atom's got no size, how can anybody tell where it is? It's not giving off any light, because it's got no fire in it to give off. So here's what I come up with: Just suppose this atom's got no size, but it's still got some kind of mind. Some kind of tiny little wit, just enough to know where it is. And the only power it has is to move somewhere else, and know where it is then.”

  “How could that be, a memory in something that doesn't exist?”

  “Just suppose it! Say you got thousands of them just lying around, just going any which way. How can any of them tell where they are? Since all the others are moving any which way, nothing around it stays the same. But then suppose somebody comes along– and I'm thinking about God here– somebody who can show them a pattern. Show them some way to set still. Like he says– you, there, you're the center, and all the rest of you, you just stay the same distance away from him all the time. Then what have you got?”

  Miss Larner thought for a moment. “A hollow sphere. A ball. But still composed of nothing, Alvin.”

  “But don't you see? That's why I knew that this was true. I mean, if there's one thing I know from doodlebugging, it's that everything's mostly empty. That anvil, it looks solid, don't it? But I tell you it's mostly empty. Just little bits of ironstuff, hanging a certain distance from each other, all patterned there. But most of the anvil is the empty space between. Don't you see? Those bits are acting just like the atoms I'm talking about. So let's say the anvil is like a mountain, only when you
get real close you see it's made of gravel. And then when you pick up the gravel, it crumbles in your hand, and you see it's made of dust. And if you could pick up a single flock of dust you'd see that it was just like the mountain, made of even tinier gravel all over again.”

  “You're saying that what we see as solid objects are really nothing but illusion. Little nothings making tiny spheres that are put together to make your bits, and pieces made from bits, and the anvil made from pieces–”

  “Only there's a lot more steps between, I reckon. Don't you see, this explains everything? Why it is that all I have to do is imagine a new shape or a new pattern or a new order, and show it in my mind, and if I think it clear and strong enough, and command the bits to change, why, they do. Because they're alive. They may be small and none too bright, but if I show them clear enough, they can do it.”

  “This is too strange for me, Alvin. To think that everything is really nothing.”

  “No, Miss Larner, you're missing the point. The point is that everything is alive. That everything is made out of living atoms, all obeying the commands that God gave them. And just following those commands, why, some of them get turned into light and heat, and some of them become iron, and some water, and some air, and some of them our own skin and bones. All those things are real– and so those atoms are real.”

  “Alvin, I told you about atoms because they were an interesting, theory. The best thinkers of our time believe there are no such things.”

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Larner, but the best thinkers never saw the things I saw, so they don't know diddly. I'm telling you that this is the only idea I can think of that explains it all– what I see and what I do.”

  “But where did these atoms come from?”

  “They don't come from anywhere. Or rather, maybe they come from everywhere. Maybe these atoms, they're just there. Always been there, always will be there. You can't cut them up. They can't die. You can't make them and you can't break them. They're forever.”

  “Then God didn't create the world.”

  "Of course he did. The atoms were nothing, just places that didn't even know where they were. It's God who put them all into places so he'd know where they were, and so they'd know where they were– and everything in the whole universe is made out of them.

  Miss Larner thought about it for the longest time. Alvin stood there watching her, waiting. He knew it was true, or at least truer than anything else he'd ever heard of or thought of. Unless she could think of something wrong with it. So many times this year she'd done that, point out something he forgot, some reason why his idea wouldn't work. So he waited for her to come up with something. Something wrong.

  Maybe she would've. Only while she was standing there outside the forge, thinking, they heard the sound of horses cantering up the road from town. Of course they looked to see who was coming in such a rush.

  It was Sheriff Pauley Wiseman and two men that Alvin never saw before. Behind them was Dr. Physicker's carriage, with old Po Doggly driving. And they didn't just pass by. They stopped right there at the curve by the forge.

  “Miss Larner,” said Pauley Wiseman. “Arthur Stuart around?”

  “Why do you ask?” said Miss Larner. “Who are these men?”

  “He's here,” said one of the men. The white-haired one. He held up a tiny box between his thumb and forefinger. Both the strangers looked at it, then looked up the hill toward the springhouse. “In there,” said the white-haired man.

  “You need any more proof than that?” asked Pauley Wiseman. He was talking to Dr. Physicker, who was now out of his carriage and standing there looking furious and helpless and altogether terrible.

  “Finders,” whispered Miss Larner.

  “That's us,” said the white-haired one. “You got a runaway slave up there, Ma'am.”

  “He is not,” she said. “He is a pupil of mine, legally adopted by Horace and Margaret Guester–”

  “We got a letter from his owner, giving his birthdate, and we got his cachet here, and he's the very one. We're sworn and cerfified, Ma'am. What we Find is found. That's the law, and if you interfere, you're obstructing.” The man spoke real nice and quiet and polite.

  “Don't worry, Miss Larner,” said Dr. Physicker. “I already have a writ from the mayor, and that'll hold him till the judge gets back tomorrow.”

  “Hold him in jail, of course,” said Pauley Wiseman. “Wouldn't want anybody to try to run off with him, now, would we?”

  “Wouldn't do much good if they tried,” said the white-haired Finder. “We'd just follow. And then we'll probably shoot them dead, seeing how they was thieves escaping with stolen property.”

  “You haven't even told the Guesters, have you!” said Miss Larner.

  “How could I?” said Dr. Physicker. “I had to stay with them, to make sure they didn't just take him.”

  “We obey the law,” said the white-haired Finder.

  “There he is,” said the black-haired Finder.

  Arthur Stuart stood in the open door of the springhouse.

  “Just stay where you are, boy!” shouted Pauley Wiseman. “If you move a muscle I'll whip you to jelly!”

  “You don't have to threaten him,” said Miss Larner, but there wasn't nobody to listen, since they were all running up the hill.

  “Don't hurt him!” cried Dr. Physicker.

  “If he don't run, he won't get hurt,” said the white-haired Finder.

  “Alvin,” said Miss Larner. “Don't do it.”

  "They ain't taking Arthur Stuart. "

  "Don't use your power like that. Not to hurt someone.

  “I tell you–”

  “Think, Alvin. We have until tomorrow. Maybe the judge–”

  “Putting him in jail!”

  “If anything happens to these Finders, then the nationals will be in it, to enforce the Fugitive Slave Treaty. Do you understand me? It's not a local crime like murder. You'd be taken off to Appalachee to be tried.”

  “I can't do nothing.”

  “Run and tell the Guesters.”

  Alvin waited just a moment. If it was up to him, he'd burn their hands right off before he let them take Arthur. But already the boy was between them, their fingers digging into Arthur's arms. Miss Larner was right. What they needed was a way to win Arthur's freedom for sure, not some stupid blunder that would end up making things worse.

  Alvin ran for the Guesters' house. It surprised him how they took it– like they'd been expecting it all the time for the last seven years. Old Peg and Horace just looked at each other, and without a word Old Peg started in packing her clothes and Arthur Stuart's.

  “What's she packing her things for?” asked Alvin.

  Horace smiled, a real tight smile. “She ain't going to let Arthur spend a night in jail alone. So she'll have them lock her up right alongside him.”

  It made sense– but it was strange to think of people like Arthur Stuart and Old Peg Guester in jail.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Alvin.

  “Load my guns,” said Horace. “And when they're gone, I'll follow.”

  Alvin told him what Miss Larw had said about the nationals coming if somebody laid hand on a Finder.

  “What's the worst they can do to me? Hang me. I tell you, I'd rather be hanged than live in this house a single day if they take Arthur Stuart away and I done nothing to stop them. And I can do it, Alvin. Hell, boy, I must've saved fifty runaway slaves in my time. Po Doggly and me, we used to pick them up this side of the river and send them on to safety in Canada. Did it all the time.”

  Alvin wasn't a bit surprised to hear of Horace Guester being an Emancipationist– and not a talker, neither.

  “I'm telling you this, Alvin, cause I need your help. I'm just one man and there's two of them. I got no one I can trust– Po Doggly ain't gone with me on something like this in a week of Christmases, and I don't know where he stands no more. But you– I know you can keep a secret, and I know you love Arthur Stuart near as much as
my wife does.”

  The way he said it gave Alvin pause. “Don't you love him, sir?”

  Horace looked at Alvin like he was crazy. “They ain't taking a mixup boy right out from under my roof, Al.”

  Goody Guester come downstairs then, with two bundles in homespun bags under her arms. “Take me into town, Horace Guester.”

  They heard the horses riding by on the road outside.

  “That's probably them,” said Alvin.

  “Don't worry, Peg,” said Horace.

  “Don't worry?” Old Peg turned on him in fury. “Only two things are likely to happen out of this, Horace. Either I lose my son to slavery in the South, or my fool husband gets himself probably killed trying to rescue him. Of course I won't worry.” Then she burst into tears and hugged Horace so tight it near broke Alvin's heart to see it.

  It was Alvin drove Goody Guester into town on the roadhouse wagon. He was standing there when she finally wore down Pauley Wiseman so he'd let her spend the night in the cell– though he made her take a terrible oath about not tying to sneak Arthur Stuart out of jail before he'd do it.

  As he led the way to the jail cell, Pauley Wiseman said, “You shouldn't fret none, Goody Guester. His master's no doubt a good man. Folks here got the wrong idea of slavery, I reckon.”

  She whirled on him. “Then you'll go in his place, Pauley? Seeing how it's so fine?”

  “Me?” He was no more than amused at the idea. “I'm White, Goody Guester. Slavery ain't my natural state.”

  Alvin made the keys slide right out of Pauley's fingers.

  “I'm sure getting clumsy,” said Pauley Wiseman.

  Goody Guester's foot just naturally ended up right on top of the key ring. “Just lift up your foot, Goody Guester,” said the sheriff, “or I'll charge you with aiding and abetting, not to mention resisting.”

  She moved her foot. The sheriff opened the door. Old Peg stepped through and gathered Arthur Stuart into her arms. Alvin watched as Pauley Wiseman closed and locked the door behind them. Then he went on home.

  * * *

  Alvin broke open the mold and rubbed away the clay that still clung to the face of the plow. The iron was smooth and hard, as good a plow as Alvin ever saw cast till then. He searched inside it and found no flaws, not big enough to mar the plow, anyway. He filed and rubbed, rubbed and filed till it was smooth, the blade sharp as if he meant to use it in a butcher shop instead of some field somewhere. He set it on top of the workbench. Then he sat there waiting while the sun rose and the rest of the world came awake.